Filter removal

Shortly after Christmas I fell, while heroically chasing a suspected fox through the icy steppes of Kaltenleutgeben, Austria. Even though I tried to throw myself under my DSLR, the UV-filter I had put on my EFS 18-200 mm full-range-zoom broke:

But it did its job, i.e. protecting the lens. I subsequently removed the broken glass, but was unable to unscrew the filter ring afterwards. Applying pincers deformed the ring a little bit, so I stopped, leery of damaging my lens. The ring did not stop the lens from working, after all, except that I could not affix another filter.

Filter ring with pincer marks

Last week  I finally went to the local photography store, where a very helpful girl told me that they'd only send the lens to Canon, anyway. Since I have recently purchased a circular polarizing filter, I was determined to get the ring off soon, and on my own.

I needed to apply force to the ring without deforming it, so I took it to the drill press and drilled two 2 mm holes in it. Tense moments there, as a slip could mean scratching the lens.

Holes drilled, it was a simple thing to insert a screwdriver through them, twist, and voilà:

Filter ring with screwdriver inserted through hole.

Removed filter ring!

 Now I am off to take some polarising photos ;)

Beautiful Photovoltaics

Sunset over photovoltaics, in Lausanne, pont chauderon

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Installing a new car radio

I got fed up with the very bad error-handling of the CD player in my Mitsubishi Colt, and decided to invest in a modern car radio, capable of playing music from USB sticks. I bought a Pioneer DEH-2200UB, and proceeded to install it, which I made more complicated than I had assumed it would be.

While popping of the front panel and uninstalling the old radio was not very hard

the new radio and the old radio did have two totally different connectors. Of course. I could have gotten and adapter, probably, but I wanted to try out my new radio now, dammit. So I had a look at the pin-outs of the two radios, snipped off the wires and connected them individually.

Against all common sense, I did not make any mistakes, and the radio lit up the second I turned the key. Lit up in a good , glowing-led sense, not in the bad, smoke-producing sense.

Who would have thought that automotive electronics would prove so simple?
By the way, those micro-SD stub USB key thingies (in white in the photo below) are perfect for the USB aux port of your car radio, I bought two 4 gb ones for 12 CHF each, more than enough space for music, and they are so small I won't accidentally rip them out of the radio by brushing against them.

Now I wonder how difficult it would be to install a keyless entry-thing on my own?

Aborted try for the Lac de Fully

The day after our trip to Derborance the girlfriend and I got more ambitious, and decided to try for the Lac Supérieur de Fully, or even the circumnavigation of le Châtelard. But on ascending to our chosen starting point,  L'Erié, we were foiled by the very forces of nature:

Snow-drifts at 1600 metres, blocking the road. We decided to enter the ravine you see in the photo above to the right, and make for Lui d'Août, with a thought of continuing around the mountain if feasible. Here is me trying to find our way on the map

Alas, it was not. I had packed all the right equipment, of course: Small gas cooker, blanket and food, as well as the right shoes

Ahem. After traversing several, extremely cold snow-fields we arrived at the refuge at Lui d'Août,  but I had forgotten the coffee, so my girlfriend succumbed to sleep

and my energy-levels were not much better. We sipped some hot milk (condensed milk with hot water, not too bad actually), and then turned back, following another path along the mountainside to L'Erié. You can see our path to the right of the photo below:

this path is part of the way around the Châtelard, and it provides extremely nice views - we'll definitely come back in a month or so.


GPS-track:

Lousine - Lui d'Août - L'Erié at EveryTrail

Mario and Luigi

live in Lausanne, Switzerland. Either that, or we have a sudden (and well-hidden) infestation of turtles.

Corner Avenue Bergières, Avenue de Beaulieu, Lausanne

That is all.

Dallying in Derborance

Last week the fabulous F. and I went for a wee walk just south of the Diablerets, from Derborance to the barrage at Goedy  and back. A very pleasant and not too long walk, it still had me puffing, but it wasn't too bad considering I had had 39 °C of fever three days before. Here is the GPS-track for your enjoyment:

Derborance - La Lui - Godey at EveryTrail


I am happy to say that the Nexus S is much better at conserving battery power while tracking than the iPhone 3G - after 4 hours I still had three quarters of power left.

Finally, here are some photos:

View near La Lui Dessous

Near Cirith Ungol

Spring is definitely here

Nexus S

I have had my Nexus S for more than two months now - I got fed up with the iPhone 3G's slooooowness, and did not want to pay through my nose for the technologically already outdated iPhone 4. After a bit of research I decided to take the plunge and go Android.

Recursion

Now that I have used the thing for a while, here are my impressions. First, the good stuff:

• zippedy-zippedy fast. This has mostly to do with the faster processor, and the fact that Apple doesn't give a shit about your old hardware when they update the OS.
• no iTunes anymore on my PC. This sounds silly, but I swear I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I deleted that particular piece of crap software from my computer. How Apple think they can convince people to switch over to using their software and hardware when such an integral part of their user experience for windows-users is the worst #$%$ piece of crap software ever is beyond me. So long, iTunes, long may it be before I see your slow ass again.
• Every setting accessible. I had jailbroken my iPhone, and was all set up to root the Nexus S, but there is really no need if you don't want to run a custom ROM. You can change nearly anything in the settings, and if you can't, there is an app that does it for you. I am currently using Swype as input method, for example, and got rid of the annoying and unnecessary fake shutter noise of the camera via the app silentSnap.
• Multitasking. Handled excellently, and without burning resources needlessly. 

But all is not flowers and buttercups in Android garden. There are some things that Apple is just better at:

• Systems integration. This is a biggy. Apples iOS is really the smoother operating and eco-system. From the centralised App-settings to the way Apps play nice with each other, iOS just works. For example, in Android you can choose your music player, podcast-player etc. So far so good, but then try and controll your music with the button on your headphones? Disaster. I like to listen to podcasts on my bike, but if I try pausing them, random music from winamp will start up - or nothing will happen. There is, as far as I can see, no real policy for how various apps can hand off control over the headphone button, so it is a matter of luck, or rather the current specific state of the phone, including which apps are suspended/running/still in memory. Urgh.
• The music player. Apples iPhone evolved out of the iPod, and it shows. This thing is made to play music, and simply better at it than anything Android currently has to offer.
• Simplicity of use. Apple's iOS, by virtue of being less capable, is also simpler to use. The difference is not large, but noticeable - Android will use a bit more of your brainpower until you are used to it.

Aaand that's it. All in all, I much prefer my Nexus S to the iPhone 3G, even back when the 3G wasn't running 3.1.3 and slow as hell. Still, I don't have a direct comparison to the iPhone 4, so I can't really recommend dumping that one for an Android in good conscience. I am happy with the Nexus, but maybe I'd be happy with an iPhone 4 too? Yet... No. iTunes. Any. More. Ever. ;)

The reason for the recent silence on this blog...

tl;dr: bla bla bla plasma bla.

my thesis, in nonuplicate. A hundred and sixteen pages long, including the French  (the horror!) abstract. May the gods of academia, i.e. the experts judging it, be merciful to it.

Faux Yogi Biscuits

The following recipe is, and I have this on good authority, extraordinarily healthy. It will make you live longer, happier, increase you jump height and your performance in bed. It will also help you lie better, c.f. the above.

If you are ambitious, you will of course want to make 'real' yogi biscuits, not faux yogi biscuits. Very well. That recipe is even simpler: First, go and catch yourself a yogi. They like to hang out near Buddhist or Hinduist temples, just follow the smell of incense. Rap the yogi smartly on the head - they generally do not put up a great struggle, as they are all vegan and hence very weak. Drag him home and grind him up. Add a bit of sesame if you want to, a dash of honey and put him in the oven.

Unfortunately, yogis are increasingly hard to come by here in Switzerland, probably due to overhunting by eager yogi-biscuit makers. Luckily my friend K. gave me the following faux yogi biscuit recipe, handed down in her family for generations:

You'll need:


*) 250 g of butter
*) 3/4 of a cup of sugar (brown, my girlfriend insists)
*) 3 cups of oat flakes
*) 2 cups of  whole grain flour
*) 1/2 a cup of awesome grains or nuts. (Sunflower, sesame, almonds, walnuts, go nuts)
*) 1/2 a cup of  raisins, soaked in water over night
*) 1 tsp of cinnamon
*) 1/4 tsp of salt or NaHCO₃ (baking soda)
*) pinch of powdered clove and ginger (the plant, not red-haired people without souls)

Preheat oven to 200°C.
Heat the butter in a water bath until liquid, then dissolve the sugar in it. Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl. Add the butter and stir. If its too dry, add a bit of warm water, the dough should stay fairly viscous, though. Use the lid of a nutella jar or something similar to form the cookies on a baking tray. Shove into the oven, and bake for about 20 minutes.
The biscuits will taste best after two or three days.

Green

My sofa always had a white cover - until last weekend, when I decided to wash it at 95 °C, together with my green rug. The result:

A really pleasant mint green. Serendipity!

Ugh. News.

The reporting about the Fukushima nuclear incident following the earthquake in Japan has been nothing short of atrocious. Even the BBC, normally my go-to place for serious world news, succumbed to inept comparisons with Chernobyl, gibbering headlines about 'melt-downs' and 'radioactive drinking water'.

Der Standard, a normally quite serious Austrian newspaper (with the best online-presence by far) even gobbled excitedly about a 'Super-GAU' - GAU is a german acronym for grösster anzunehmender Unfall, or worst-case scenario.

And on Wednesday this:

20minutes is a Swiss free-of-cost newspaper, so no aspirations of quality here, but still: The headline screams 'Le nuage radioactif passe sur la suisse', or 'Radioaktive cloud passing above Switzerland'. True, they do say (on page 2) that the radioactivity poses no danger to anybody in Switzerland, but still. Can you imagine a more lurid and sensational headline? Is a bit of journalistic integrity too much to ask for?

Forced to draw cute

Sigh. I was accused of only producing dark and gloomy work in my drawing-course. Of course I protested that this wasn't true, but couldn't point to any recent non-gloomy work quickly enough. Therefore I was condemned to paint something 'cute'; more specifically, in the words of my teacher: "A princess. Riding on a dolphin. And the dolphin is smiling."

Hence the above. I also tried out water-soluble crayons for the first time, and am not too impressed. I think I prefer straight-up watercolour.
I am not at all happy with the sky - I am beginning to think that clouds may be my nemesis. Whatever I draw next (hopefully I am done with 'cute'...) will have to have some clouds in it, because clearly I need the practice.


Water-soluble pencils on 300 gsm A3 aquarelle-paper.

Motivational Poster

F. and I are both big fans of Cannibal: The Musical,  so I made her a motivational poster the other day, to get her through a long day of meetings.

 

On a completely related note, the camera of the Nexus S is fabulous.

Rye bread

They don't know how to make bread in western Switzerland. It's all fluffy baguette and croissants - nice on a Saturday morning with du café and a pretty lady in your bed, but nothing you can really subsist on - not the wonderful, heavy and dark bread we have in Austria. So, after my success with the lazy-man's loaf, I decided to make my own.

First thing you'll need is a proper sourdough, since a 100% rye-bread won't rise properly on yeast (I know, for I have tried!). For the past two weeks I have been feeding my sourdough starter - I started from scratch with viscous paste of rye flour and water. My first attempt turned bad, but the second:

A sourdough starter. Each day I would feed it a few spoonfuls of rye flour and water, which it greedily devoured.

After two weeks its rising power convinced me, so I fed it up to about half a kg, made a very wet rye dough ( the starter, about 500g more rye flour, some salt, ground coriander and water). I let it rise for three hours, shoved it into the oven, and voilà:

Rye bread! I was a bit too light on the salt, and the next one will get some cumin as well, I think, but still, it was delicious. Next batch will be up tomorrow.